The finest android apps curated by humans

Continuing our hunt for the best flagship phone of 2016 we look at the OnePlus 3. If this is any indicator of what’s coming up, then we do feel excited about the mobile phone future. OnePlus managed to stuff in a humongous 6GB of RAM, powerful processing and pretty much every flagship feature at a pocket friendly price.

Flagship features made affordable

With every generation of the mobile phone the feature stack has been piling up sky-high. From fingerprint sensors to 4k displays, phones have pushed miniaturization to the limits but at the cost of sky rocketing prices. The OnePlus 3 stands out as an exception. The phone packs in all the latest feature innovations at a pocket friendly price tag.

What really sets the OnePlus 3 apart is OxygenOS. Every phone manufacturer has their own customized Android version and the OnePlus is no exception. The early OnePlus started with Cyanogen but eventually started their own fork called OxygenOS. The customization is very light and keeps the user experience close to vanilla Android, which we consider a big plus.

Blazing performance

Snapdragon 820 has been one of the fastest chipsets for 2016 and OnePlus 3 packs it under the hood. A more humbling quad core compared to the Exynos 8890 octa core, but coupled with the Adreno GPU the Snapdragon beats the Exynos in most of the graphics intensive apps.

Memory for everything

The big question this year is just how much RAM is enough? While most flagship phones for 2016 peg it at 4GB, OnePlus 3 ups the ante to a whopping 6GB. The massive RAM helps keep more than 20 apps open and running at any time. You can have twitter, youtube, chrome, health apps, inbox, messaging and just about every daily use app open and OnePlus 3 doesn’t stutter.

On launch there were a few forums talking of OxygenOS not using the oodles of RAM onboard. The CTO of OnePlus clarified that efficient power management required using less RAM and it is now fixed to enable using all of it maybe at the cost of battery efficiency.

The fact remains that opening a handful of apps eats into system memory and the OS could do better at memory optimization and battery consumption. But rest assured OnePlus has been steadily building on OxygenOS and we’re sure to see improvements soon.

Display

The 5.5″ display seems to have settled down as the most comfortable of the large form factors and OnePlus 3 comes with a bright and nicely optimized AMOLED 5.5″ display with 401ppi. With Corning Glass 4 for scratch protection this is a nice balanced screen choice. OxygenOS does allow setting the color tone and an added night mode to avoid eye strain.

Memory

The phone comes with 64GB of storage but lacks a microsd card slot for further expansion. Though 64GB is a lot of memory for most people, if you are the kind that stuffs all your music, photos and media onto the phone this could cramp your style.

Security

2016 has seen the fingerprint security become a standard offering on phones and OnePlus 3 integrates a sensor on the front home button area, unlike the S7 the home button is not a press button but more a capacitive touch button which works just fine too.

Software

OxygenOS is all about usability tweaks and getting the best out of the hardware. Use gesture controls for phone lock, LED light and camera, double tap the power button to open the camera and the proximity sensor can turn the screen on when you pull it out of your pocket. All minor tweaks but major usability features.

Camera

16MP rear shooter and a 8MP front camera there’s not dearth of pixels to be captured. The photo quality is one of the best in the market, beaten only by the Samsung S7 as of now.

Battery & Charge

The 3000mah battery is enough to last well past a single day. If you do have to recharge quickly, OnePlus 3 supports Dash Charge which gives you 50% charge in 30 minutes.

Overall the best mid-budget phone with features matching (literally) the top end phones in the market.